Saturday, March 26, 2016

If you are not aware, I do a few things on Youtube. Currently I'm working through a strange book I found at Goodwill. It's from the middle of last century, but interesting and terrible nonetheless. Give it a view, like it, dislike it, comment on it, subscribe, or whatever. Here's the most recent one. Be warned, they are lengthy, but given the point that you're reading my posts here, I'm sure that's not a terrible problem.

With that out of the way, let's continue this tearing down of the overly built-up arguments.

23: The Evidence of the Protein Origin

So we have before us, not an actual argument, but some form of evidence! I do hope it actually is.

The opening is basically pulling information from this article. There are bits of the original within his argument, presumably. The author thinks that these words somehow form sentences which detract from the idea that evolution works, while simultaneously saying that this is exactly what must have happened after god did something. It's a bad flaw of logic, wherein the presumption is that because science works, god must be making it work, even if the science directly contradicts the dogma.

Everything before point 8 is basically not supporting the claim made in point 8, which is

8. Intelligent design and its greatest intelligent designerGod was a must to create DNA, RNA, proteins etc.

In fact, this entire argument is an argument from verbosity as well, another common fallacy whereby lots of words are substituted for any real argument. Arguments from verbosity generally are when someone uses big words needlessly, or when someone gives rapid-fire point which are essentially non-sequiturs, but these are not requirements of the fallacy. In this case, it's simply an argument that is made by using such a convoluted explanation that a reply is necessarily longer and more complex.

24: The Evidence of the Urey-Miller Experiment

This is actually an interesting argument I've heard, but it's never made very well, and this is no exception.

1a. Amino Acid Synthesis (1953). When Stanley Miller produced a few amino acids from chemicals, amid a continuous small sparking apparatus, newspaper headlines proclaimed: “Life has been created!” But proponents of evolution hid the truth: The experiment had disproved the possibility that evolution could occur.

Basically, it's a false premise. Let's have a tiny bit of background on the experiment. Basically, the important part from that is under the "Other Experiments" section:

This experiment inspired many others. In 1961, Joan Oró found that the nucleotide base adenine could be made from hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and ammonia in a water solution. His experiment produced a large amount of adenine, the molecules of which were formed from 5 molecules of HCN.[15] Also, many amino acids are formed from HCN and ammonia under these conditions.[16] Experiments conducted later showed that the other RNA and DNA nucleobases could be obtained through simulated prebiotic chemistry with a reducing atmosphere.[17]

The Miller experiment, in conjunction with experiments that came after, are clear evidence that all the basic parts of DNA and RNA can occur naturally in the presence of the elements which exist on earth. It's literally a lie to say that this experiment disproves evolution. Similarly, it's supposedly a sin to tell a lie. It's fascinating, then, how many people willingly believe in a god they know is going to send them to purgatory or hell for this transgression.

Now I'm going to pick apart the next half-point in steady fashion.

1b. The amino acids were totally dead,

Well, amino acids aren't the most complex things. I suppose one could say they are alive, or they are dead, but they'll never be both. They were not dead in the sense that they had been born earlier. A simple chemical process brought them about, and as long as they are the specific chain that makes a given acid, they are that acid. It's not like when an organism dies, it's more like saying that a piece of dirt, or a glass of soda, is somehow dead. These things aren't going to come to life, and they're similarly never going to die.

and the experiment only proved that a synthetic production of them

Sure, it's a synthetic production. That's the point. We're going to address a few points here. In this context, anything which is made is synthesized. It's not the greatest choice of wording. We can synthesize things, but so can nature. Rain clouds, salts, quartz crystals, oil, plate tectonics, all these thing are synthetic in the sense that they are synthesized, or given rise to by some process. I don't think this is the intent of the author, however, so I'll not tarry.

The next point is that the synthesis mimics what happens in nature. It's a bit like the neat experiment you can do at home, wherein you pressurize a bottle, and see the condensation of water that builds up in the air. Essentially, a mini-cloud machine, completely created by you. This in no way discredits the fact that clouds above us are formed by a similar process: pressure fronts and raindrop nucleus dirt, et cetera. It's not an exact representation, but it gets the point across, and demonstrates the underlying principles. This is science, plain and simple.

would result in equal amounts of left- and right-handed amino acids.

That's exactly right, and it's an interesting thing to think about. Until they actually start being used in more complicated processes (it's very difficult to include every single element in a test tube, after all) it's not clear that chirality would have any negative consequences when the acids are just sitting there in a literal chemical stew. Again, we're not sure why chirality tends to be right-handed in living things, but we can presume there's some interesting reason. It probably has something to do with how cells form, but we simply don't have enough science yet to make any real determination.

Here's an example of two shells which show chirality reverse of one another.

Here's an example hypothesis that I came up with one day. We know that chirality favors one type of twist. We know also that astronauts have a difficult time retaining good physiques, and plants simply do not grow well, in the absence of gravity, given the lack of a need for the same kind of strength as people walking under gravity all day. Plants seem to need gravity to have a proper stress to develop the various parts of its cells and so on.

Therefore, It's my hypothesis that chirality of DNA has something to do with gravity, and something to do with the well-being of cells that exist in creatures. I could be wrong. Perhaps it's something along the lines that radiation tends to affect negatively left-hand chirality, or that magnetic fields simply permit easier construction of constituent parts of cells. Perhaps it's some process we're not even familiar with yet, and we'll accidentally stumble on the answer in 2078.

Regardless, that's how science works. A hypothesis is put forward, all evidence is evaluated, and the most logical (and usually simplest, but not always) explanation that explains the greatest number of things wins.

Since only left-handed ones exist in animals, accidental production could never produce a living creature.

Alright, I got left and right mixed up. We've all got left-handed chirality. Although, maybe I did that on purpose, to demonstrate how to fix an error one has made. Maybe someone will learn something here. So many maybes.

Also, the assertion that it couldn't is simply incorrect. We don't know if it could or could not, we only know that it did or (in this case) did not.

2. Till nowadays

Oh, is that what you are doing? Until you learn how to use words, perhaps tilling the land is a more productive use of your time. GOOD JOB!

life could not be created in any laboratory.

Yeah, penicillin and stuff, who needs them anyway?

Therefore it must have been created by God.

Of course. How many want to bet that he ends nearly every one of these the same way? Well, trudge on I must. Naturally, he misses the point again, but this time it's much more straightforward. Let me sum it up in my own quote here.

Chirality works because evolution and chemistry work, but every single possible chemical process is not necessarily represented here on earth, therefore god must have made everything. Even those things which we claim that science explains, absent a god.

I would like to think that I could make the point more concisely, but now we've got ourselves a very large number of words, all to dissect a few points. Onward and upward, as they say.

25: The Argument of the Zip Codes within the Cells

The basic premise here is that of irreducible complexity. Let's see if we can't reduce the complexity of this argument, and I think I shall do so. Basically, as the author puts more words into his argument, it seems that I need fewer in mine.

5. All the above speaks about amazing, irreducible complexity and intelligent design of one of the simplest cells, the yeast.

Neatly, we can skip directly to point five, since points 1-4 are just a rip of someone else's words again. Although,the author is missing the point here, and let's jump back to a line from those first four.

Proteins are the workhorses of the cell, but to get the most work out of them, they need to be in the right place.

This is correct. It's almost as though proteins can indeed exist independent of cells, like amino acids (which our intrepid author dared to prove actually happen in literally the penultimate argument). It's not irreducibly complex, and now I'm quite sure that the author knows not what 'irreducible complexity' actually means.

6. How this complex system evolved was not explained.

That's correct. It's discussing how it functions, not how it came to function. This is what makes me think he honestly just doesn't understand the words he's using.

This complexity found in the simple cell of yeast is one more example out of innumerable complex systems that are necessary for the existence of the cell.

Yeast isn't the simplest cell, to be certain, but it's one of the simplest. It's also interesting that a creationist is using yeast as an example of creation. To be clear, yeast reproduce asexually, either through mitosis or budding. If a god did create humans, it certainly would not have needed to make us sexual creatures. To be certain, things like yeast and bananas and most asexual things do not evolve at nearly the speed of sexual things, which for this purpose I'm also including nonsexual things which swap dna (like bacteria, for example, which typically don't have a sex either in the typical sense).

I only bring up that point because it clearly contradicts points 7 & 8.

7. The irreducible complex systems are evidence of an intelligent design that could have been made only by a super intelligent person all men call God.8. God is a must, He exists.

As you can see, this post has gone on quite long enough, so tune in here next time to hear some more unraveling.

About Me

My name is Josh, and I am a full-time factory worker with an interest in writing, knitting, photography, computers, cycling and lots of other things. I'm 30 years old.

Thanks for visiting!

Photography

You may notice some nifty photos in my blog posts, and some of them are actually mine!

If you are in need of a photographer, and you happen to live near me, drop me a line! I'm sure we can work something out.

Literative.com

I have started entering submissions into a weekly short-story writing contest. My first winning entry was for the contest of September 25, 2015. There are lots of great authors there, too!

I have since won a few more. If you're interested in reading my short story winning entries, I'll keep links to them here. I'm also active on the forums there, so keep an eye out. You never know when I'll write something interesting. I'll probably compile my works into a book someday if people are interested.